Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Watching The Election Returns Come In


This is how Uptowners did it in 1920, gathering at Racine and Broadway to see the election results projected onto the front of the Loren Miller Store, which later became Goldblatt's, then Borders.

Luckily, we don't have to do that.  These people couldn't imagine a world with television and internet (much as we can't imagine a world without them).

We will post the election results for 46th Ward alderman as they come in, in the comments of as updates to this post.  Hit refresh often.  You can also see them come in at http://www.chicagoelections.com/. CLTV will show the WGN News Election Special from 7pm until 10pm. The Tribune has a live election page that will show results coming in at http://elections.chicagotribune.com/results/.

Update:  As of Saturday, April 11th, the unofficial results with all 40 precincts in:

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 6,971 - 53.70%
AMY CRAWFORD - 6,011 - 46.30%
Total votes cast: 12,982

Update:  11:25pm -- 39 out of 40 precincts (97.50 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 6,645 - 53.81 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 5,705 - 46.19 %

Update:  10pm -- with 90% of the vote in, we're going to assume the percentages will stay the same as they have for the past couple hours.  I've been hitting the "refresh" button like a lab rat and I don't think there will be an upset, although the Tribune and WGN have not yet declared a winner in the 46th Ward.  Will update with more results tomorrow morning.  Congratulations to James Cappleman on his victory, and kudos to Amy Crawford for a strong and well-fought challenge.  Thanks to everyone who volunteered during this long campaign and made democracy happen.

Update:  9:42pm - 36 out of 40 precincts (90.00 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 6,143 - 53.68 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 5,300 - 46.32 %

Update:  9:37pm.  Both DNAinfo and Aldertrack have declared Cappleman the winner.  Still waiting for Tribune/WGN to say something.

Update:  9:27pm - 35 out of 40 precincts (87.50 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 5,916 - 53.59 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 5,124 - 46.41 %

Update:  9:16pm - 34 out of 40 precincts (85.00 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 5,734 - 53.64 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 4,956 - 46.36 %

Update:  8:57pm - 33 out of 40 precincts (82.50 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 5,607 - 53.78 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 4,819 - 46.22 %

Update:  8:47pm - 32 out of 40 precincts (80.00 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 5,328 - 53.51 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 4,629 - 46.49 %

Update:  8:37pm - 31 out of 40 precincts (77.50 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 5,177 - 53.49 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 4,502 - 46.51 %

Update:  8:28pm - 29 out of 40 precincts (72.50 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 4,821 - 53.00 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 4,276 - 47.00 %

Update:  8:06pm - 28 out of 40 precincts (70.00 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 4,701 - 53.24 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 4,128 - 46.76 %

Update:  7:57pm - 25 out of 40 precincts (62.50 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 4,136 - 53.74 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 3,561 - 46.26 %

Update:  7:47pm - 23 out of 40 precincts (57.50 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 3,871 - 53.59 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 3,353 - 46.41 %

Update:  7:35pm - 19 out of 40 precincts (47.50 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 3,033 - 52.87 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 2,704 - 47.13 %

Update:  7:24pm - 10 out of 40 precincts (25.00 %)

JAMES CAPPLEMAN - 1,511 - 49.90 %
AMY CRAWFORD - 1,517 - 50.10 %

Update:  Nothing in yet at 7:16.  Even Lionel voted.  Hope you did too.


18 comments:

  1. Latest citywide election numbers project a turnout of about 40 percent of registered voters. Apparently a late surge going on.

    One precinct in the 46th, 4640 Sheridan, will remain open till 8pm because of a late opening this morning.

    I looked at UU past election posts and in past elections returns started being posted as early as 7:19 and a whole lot after 7:30. Precincts come in randomly and include all early votes and absentee ballots that were returned by yesterday. Unless it's close we should have a good idea who's won and by approximately how much by 7:45-8:00.

    If you look at past UU election night posts the numbers remain fairly consistent after about 25 percent of the precincts report. Ask Littleton he can explain it. Something about chaos theory, twerking and randomality all wrapped up in a Sonic burger.

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  2. Alderman 46th Ward
    10 out of 40 precincts (25.00 %)

    JAMES CAPPLEMAN 1,511 49.90 %
    AMY CRAWFORD 1,517 50.10 %

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  3. Alderman 46th Ward
    19 out of 40 precincts (47.50 %)

    JAMES CAPPLEMAN 3,033 52.87 %
    AMY CRAWFORD 2,704 47.13 %

    I like that top number better. Woo. I was having a "WOWIE" moment

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  4. Alderman 46th Ward
    23 out of 40 precincts (57.50 %)

    JAMES CAPPLEMAN 3,871 53.59 %
    AMY CRAWFORD 3,353 46.41 %

    I'm wearing drag and I'm beginning to sing............

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  5. If these numbers hold up we're looking at about 12,500 votes in the runoff here in the aldermanic race. Crawford needs about 59 percent of the remaining vote to win it.

    Fa la la la la............figaro figaro figaro. I need to gargle with some saltwater before I begin.

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  6. At this point with 77.5% of the precincts in Crawford needs about 62 percent of the remaining vote to tie this thing.

    Ain't likely.

    Somewhere in the 46th Ward a group of pigeons are crying.

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  7. Well I'm here at the Uptown Underground and I've put my old school calculator away. I can't read the calculator on my phone and the folks here might guess my secret squirrel ID. Uptown Underground is nice. One of those business successes that the Sun Times and Tribune ignored. Congrats to James Cappleman and thank you to all who voted for him. I hope to be here again in four years for his next victory soiree and I wish him and Richard many many happy years together.

    PS. The second victory is even more important than the first. One victory could be written off as a fluke. Two victories..............nuh huh. Two victories means the bad old days ain't coming back even though we have lotsa work ahead of us.

    I would have liked to see higher turnout though, but no matter what JPUSA and their brothers in arms say tomorrow a 7 point or so win is a WIN.

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  8. So IP was at the Underground last night? So was I. Very nice place I bet it is going to be a hit.

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    1. Yep, I was there. Nice place. It should do well. Perhaps our friends at JPUSA can open a new business entity and supply burlesque dancers. Let's see they had the porch people and roofers what should this entity be called?

      The Booty Babes? I'm open to suggestions and I'm sure our spirit filled betters on Wilson would appreciate any well meaning suggestions.

      "Ladies and Gentlemen let's have a big round of applause for Uptown's own spirit filled lassies of lasciviousness: The Booty Babes."

      Delete
  9. With one precinct out I feel safe in declaring that campaign literature printers did very well with this election.

    I will break down the numbers more later, but Cappleman won North of Montrose, in Buena Park and in Lakeview. Yes in Lakeview. He lost 7 of 13 Lakeview precincts, but won a majority of Lakeview votes by 55 votes. His best precinct was the 4th which is where he lives. It's also where Amy Crawford lives. He got a mere 67% in that precinct.

    His best area of the ward was Buena Park where he was mid 50's to low 60's in every precinct. His worst precinct was our friends over at JPUSA where he only won 21% of the vote. That is also the only precinct Chuy won;however, there was a big dropoff of 20 points between the pro Crawford vote and the Chuy vote. Some people in JPUSA apparently defected to Rahm. Better get the paddles out Trott. Speaking of Trott he tried using my IrishPirate schtick as a way to rally the JPUSA troops. Talked about getting me to "walk the plank" on his FB page a week or two ago. Sorry Jon I'm still here and JPUSA becomes more irrelevant by the day and the only thing I'm doing on that plank is twerking while I eat a burger from Sonic and watch some burlesque at Uptown Underground.

    I will break down the numbers and election later. Time to hop in my gentrified clawfoot tub and soak some of that victory alcohol out of my system. Or perhaps I will just pour a bottle of wine into my tub and marinate in it.

    I will say though that the ward runoff was a good thing. If Cappleman had won outright in February with say 50.1 % of the vote the smarter of his enemies, it's a relative concept folks, would have held out hope for a resurrection of Shillerista politics in the future. Those smarter folks with close to 3 digit IQ's now likely realize that ain't likely. Capp won in a ward that was remapped to be slightly less favorable to him than the old map and once the final numbers are in he still will have likely won with 1000 votes and an 8 percent spread.

    I will give Team Amy one thing though. The way she played that FOP endorsement was a thing of beauty. Without that the Capp margin of victory would likely have been significantly higher. How she got the FOP endorsement is another question. I don't think it has anything to do with perceiving her to be tougher on crime; although, that's how she played it.

    I'd also like to congratulate Team Amy on their fine use of pigeons in their campaign. You should put the cost of all that literature down as an "in kind" donation to the Cappleman campaign. Did they have any idea of how much people hate pigeons? Speaking of pigeons thanks to the Finans and Rutherfords for bankrolling part of the Amy campaign. Amy took 47 percent of the vote in the 16th precinct in February and 38 percent yesterday. The 16th precinct is the NW corner of Sheridan Park. Wonder why that massive drop in support happened? That should be put down as an in kind donation to the Capp campaign too.

    Now in 2011 Capp took a small donation from the guy who then owned the Wilson Men's Hotel. It was a minor mistake on his part. Never take donations from people who because of their sparkling personalities or business interests are hated in part of the ward. If Amy Crawford has attended the meetings regarding the old house being torn down she would have realized taking Finan and Rutherford money was silly. By itself that swung the numbers in western Sheridan Park by probably 150 or more votes in Capp's favor.

    Not even Littleton twerking could overturn that kind of tide.

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  10. Boo Hoo! The major media reporters who tried to sway the race only proved how irrelevant they truly are.. Same result as last time. Uptown voters respond with, "You don't live here. You don't volunteer here. You don't matter." Take a hike, Mark, John and Laura

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    1. Mark is Mark Brown.

      Laura is Laura Washington...who may now live in the Lakeview portion of our fine ward. Still a shillerista mouthpiece though.

      John? Did you mean Neil Steinberg? He wrote some pigeon related anti Cappleman stuff a few years back.

      I can't find any John Kass stuff related to Cappleman.

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    2. If there were ever a doubt that Helen Shiller was holding an increasingly weak grip on the puppet strings behind the Crawford campaign, it ended when her bestie "Lakeview Laura" Washington wrote a slamming column aimed at Cappleman the week before the campaign. She lives in 46, but hasn't mentioned it since her last pro-Nowatny and pro-Phelan columns in 2011.

      Mark Brown doesn't like Cappleman at all, he admitted that to me a couple years ago. Too bad someone for him that someone living in comfort in Oak Park doesn't have any influence over what goes on in Uptown. Perhaps he should recruit some of the people living under the viaducts to move to his cozy little town. We could throw in some pigeons free of charge.

      As for the Rutherfords, they hate Cappleman on a personal level for some reason. They're three-time losers in being the biggest contributors to three anti-Cappleman candidates now. Phelan, Nowatny, and Crawford. They are the anti-barometers of the way the political winds are blowing in Uptown. If you want to see who'll win a hypothetical future election, look the opposite direction of where the Rutherford money is going.

      Property values around Kenmore and Lawrence have undoubtedly gone up thanks to the closure of Lawrence House. People living in that area might get a better price renting out or selling their condos than they would have before Flats bought it.

      I wish I owned moderately-priced rental housing in Rogers Park, Pilsen or Logan Square. I foresee a rush to those areas of people hoping to make that the next "social republic of Chicago" - just like four years ago, when Uptown emptied out the most vocal of its revolutionaries.

      Those claiming they are saving Uptown from gentrification need to realize that ship has sailed. It sailed two decades ago. Talk to people who live the real ungentrified sections of Chicago 'cept most of the wannabe saviors are too scared to go to those areas. Ask them what they think about a neighborhood that has two Starbucks, multiple theaters, multiple sidewalk cafes, a gay sports bar, an upcoming rock climbing gym, multiple interior design firms, an exotic animal pet store, a bread and cheese shop, a recording studio, and a pricey restaurant that got two Michelin stars in its first year of existence.

      They'll tell you, that's gentrified.

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  11. New vote totals as of tonight:

    12643 total votes.

    Cappleman
    6789
    53.70%

    Crawford
    5854
    46.30%

    There might be 100-200 absentee and provisional ballots out which will be added over the next few weeks.

    I was mistaken about one precinct in Buena Park. Cappleman lost the 11th precinct which is basically the area between Buena and Montrose and Sheridan to Hazel. He actually dropped about 5% there. Either Crawford had some good workers targeting that precinct and/or Capps team concentrated on upping his numbers in other parts of the ward and figured Buena Park was all good. It was only a nine vote difference between the campaigns.

    Some general observations about the Feb v April numbers.

    Turnout went up about 24 percent overall.

    Turnout in the precincts Denice carried went up around 19 percent.

    Turnout in the precincts Cappleman carried generally went up at a slightly higher rate than in the precincts Crawford carried. Capp's percentages went up in all but two precincts both in the center of Buena Park. I'm guessing his resources were deployed elsewhere. Crawford's percentages went up in every precinct except for four in Lakeview. Capp made some major gains in Lakeview. Nothing like the shock of a runoff to get the competitive juices flowing like the shakes from a Sonic restaurant on a hot Friday night in July.

    The most amazing turnaround of the night was the 5th precinct just south of Irving from say Thorek to Kelly Park/Clifton.

    Feb

    Crawford 65% 140 Votes

    Cappleman 32% 69 Votes

    Apr

    Crawford 52% 143 Votes

    Cappleman 48% 134 Votes

    Essentially she picked up 3 votes in that precinct and he picked up 65.

    Now that precinct is an outlier, but if I was an ancient Greek and it was a battle in a war instead of a precinct in a runoff I'd be writing some epic poetry about it. That one precinct provided just enough votes so he could legitimately claim to have won Lakeview. That's like Custer at Gettysburg continuously charging against overwhelming odds and "losing" his tiny piece of the overall battle yet providing the time and impetus for an overall win. Before his rendezvous with his own ego and a confederation of pissed off North Plains tribes he was a national hero. If Sonic had been around they would have named a shake after him.

    The rest of this is partially guesswork, but I suspect that Crawford got about 70 percent of the Davis voters who turned out. Each precinct turned out a higher number of voters, but the increases varied from about 4% to 30%. In the precincts that had a high Davis vote total Crawford generally picked up a larger percentage of votes than Cappleman. I'd also guess that roughly 25-35 percent of the Davis voters didn't vote in the runoff. Roughly speaking for every additional voter who turned out yesterday Cappleman probably got 65-70 percent of them. Again this is no exact science. It's not like trying to figure out the torque on Littleton's booty as he twerks in front of some public gathering.

    In a few days after I've digested the results and some more Sonic cheeseburgers I'll write a postmortem on the election. I think possibly ten or eleven people may like it, but first I must try out some more Sonic shakes.





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  12. IP. The food at Sonic is terrible. I can't believe people eat there.

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    1. Depends on what you compare it too. Compared to other fast food joints the food is on par of terribleness. People go for the shakes and the car service in the summer months. It's a regional thing and the people who remember growing up with Sonic love it for the nostalgia.

      Now the service at that Sonic was horrible, THANKS CAPPLEMAN, but it's getting better the last few times I've gone there. Really if you look at some of the comments made about it people were actually blaming Capp for the service there as if he were the owner of the franchise. I half expected to go in there and see him behind the counter yelling "shake, shake, vanilla shake, chocolate shake, cheesburgah, cheeburgah, cheeseburgah."

      One of the many things that annoyed me about the campaign was the denigration of Sonic both as a business and as an improvement for the neighborhood. I'm sure the people who work there appreciate its existence. I appreciate a business and not another vacant lot. The editorial boards and Amy Crawford mocked it a bit as business development, but we're the only neighborhood in the city with a Sonic and people do go out of their way in the summer months to go there.

      Business development doesn't just magically happen and crime doesn't just magically go down when some bored editorial board writer pens a snarky endorsement or some candidate decides that it's time to try something else to do for awhile.

      I had a conversation at the Cappleman victory party at the Uptown Underground, another business that just didn't magically appear, and gave my history of gentrification on the north side. Forty years ago parts of Lincoln Park were worse than any block we currently have in Uptown. Puerto Rican gangs battled white gangs at Armitage and Halsted who were busy battling the various Mexican and black gangs that were also around. I'm getting nostalgic. Sniff. Is there a White Castle around? It's like a NE/Midwestern version of Sonic.

      Change takes time. Not months or years, but decades. The gentrification of Lincoln Park was not basically complete until the late nineties when the western parts around Fullerton and Greenview started to fill up with newer buildings. Hell, some new construction still going on around there and a few of the streets like Clybourn north of Fullerton are still filled with dilapidated old frame buildings surrounded by new construction.

      Gentrification in Uptown was a bit different because away from the lakefront it was really driven by individual owners and small developers buying homes and 2-6 unit buildings and renovating them. Outside the building of Truman College there was no en masse slum clearance in Uptown. That and we had all the lovely crime free low income housing built from say 1970 to 1995 and then older buildings Shiller managed to tie up with low income housing using TIF money and tax credits.

      Now our moral betters see gentrification as an evil. I see it as a way of keeping tax money in the city and middle/upper income people in the city. Then again I'm evil. Where's my Sonic Shake?

      See what happens when you wind me up? Don't badmouth my Sonic!

      Delete
  13. Here is a breakdown of the votes by areas of the ward. Some absentee ballots still out but shouldn't make any significant difference in these percentages. Some of the precincts straddle subareas of the ward so I split those precincts based on the amount of hail last night and my whim.


    12,643 Votes Ward Wide for Alderman


    North of Montrose(Dreaded Area Montrose North) DAMN

    Provided 40 percent of the overall votes and went 54-46 for Capp. Actually 53.74 which is DAMN close to the actual percentages ward wide.

    So much for the theory among our moralist betters that DAMN was not Capplefriendly overall. "60640 will never vote for Cappleman!" Wrong.


    Buena Park--Irving to Montrose-provided 23% of the overall vote and went 58-42 for Capp. Once again proving that Buena Park is buena for Cappleman.

    Lakeview--South of Irving provided 37% of the overall vote and went 51-49 for Capp. An amazing turnaround from February where he got spanked in Lakeview.
    In just the 5th precinct North of Wrigley Field he picked up 65 new votes and Crawford picked up 3 new votes from the February totals. I really thought he would lose Lakeview by a few hundred votes. Won it by about 55 or so.

    Lakeview went from 34% of the total vote in Feb to 37%.

    Buena Park dropped a point to 23%

    DAMN dropped 2 points to 40%.

    Essentially in the newly drawn ward Lakeview votes nearly equal DAMN votes. Whodathunkit? I suspect Team Capp worked harder in Lakeview to bring out their voters which is reflected in the slight changes in percentage turnouts among the three ward areas. Focusing on where you're relatively weaker is a good electoral strategy coupled with keeping Quarky, Littleton, FGFM, Ryne, Kaplan, Mills, and of course JPUSA on the other side. Nothing better to motivate Capplevoters than the other sides supporters. I can't wait for the best selling autobiography of Littleton to come out: Portrait of the Twerker as a Good Haired Man: My Life as an Artist So Far.

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